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Sunday, March 26, 2017

SUNDAY REVIEW / THE PRINCESS BY D.H. LAWRENCE

FROM
THE PUBLIC DOMAIN:

“The
Princess” is a tale by the English author D. H. Lawrence. He wrote it in
September and October 1924 during a stay at the Kiowa Ranch in New Mexico. The
story was first published in instalments in the March, April and May 1925
issues of the Calendar of Modern Letters. It was then printed as a book, along
with St Mawr, by Martin Secker on 14th May 1925.

To her father, she
was The Princess. To her Boston aunts and uncles she was just Dollie Urquhart,
poor little thing.

Colin
Urquhart was just a bit mad. He was of an old Scottish family, and he claimed
royal blood. The blood of Scottish kings flowed in his veins. On this point,
his American relatives said, he was just a bit "off".

They
could not bear any more to be told which royal blood of Scotland blued his
veins. The whole thing was rather ridiculous, and a sore point. The only fact
they remembered was that it was not Stuart.

He
was a handsome man, with a wide-open blue eye that seemed sometimes to be
looking at nothing, soft black hair brushed rather low on his low, broad brow,
and a very attractive body. Add to this a most beautiful speaking voice,
usually rather hushed and diffident, but sometimes resonant and powerful like
bronze, and you have the sum of his charms.

He
looked like some old Celtic hero. He looked as if he should have worn a greyish
kilt and a sporran, and shown his knees. His voice came direct out of the
hushed Ossianic past.

For
the rest, he was one of those gentlemen of sufficient but not excessive means
who 50 years ago wandered vaguely about, never arriving anywhere, never doing
anything, and never definitely being anything, yet well received in the good
society of more than one country.

He
did not marry till he was nearly 40, and then it was a wealthy Miss Prescott,
from New England. Hannah Prescott at 22 was fascinated by the man with the soft
black hair not yet touched by grey, and the wide, rather vague blue eyes. Many
women had been fascinated before her. But Colin Urquhart, by his very
vagueness, had avoided any decisive connection.

Mrs.
Urquhart lived three years in the mist and glamour of her husband's presence.

And
then it broke her.

It
was like living with a fascinating spectre. About most things he was
completely, even ghostly oblivious. He was always charming, courteous,
perfectly gracious in that hushed, musical voice of his. But absent. When all
came to all, he just wasn't there. "Not all there," as the vulgar
say.

He
was the father of the little girl she bore at the end of the first year. But
this did not substantiate him the more. His very beauty and his haunting
musical quality became dreadful to her after the first few months. The strange
echo: he was like a living echo! His very flesh, when you touched it, did not
seem quite the flesh of a real man.

Perhaps
it was that he was a little bit mad. She thought it definitely the night her
baby was born.

"Ah,
so my little princess has come at last!" he said, in his throaty, singing
Celtic voice, like a glad chant, swaying absorbed.

It
was a tiny, frail baby, with wide, amazed blue eyes. They christened it Mary
Henrietta. She called the little thing My Dollie. He called it always My
Princess.

It
was useless to fly at him. He just opened his wide blue eyes wider, and took a
child-like, silent dignity there was no getting past.

Hannah
Prescott had never been robust. She had no great desire to live. So when the baby
was two years old she suddenly died.

The
Prescotts felt a deep but unadmitted resentment against Colin Urquhart. They
said he was selfish. Therefore they dis- continued Hannah's income, a month
after her burial in Florence, after they had urged the father to give the child
over to them, and he had courteously, musically, but quite finally re- fused.
He treated the Prescotts as if they were not of his world, not realities to
him: just casual phenomena, or gramophones, talking-machines that had to be
answered. He answered them. But of their actual existence he was never once
aware.

They
debated having him certified unsuitable to be guardian of his own child. But
that would have created a scandal. So they did the simplest thing, after
all—washed their hands of him. But they wrote scrupulously to the child, and
sent her modest presents of money at Christmas, and on the anniversary of the
death of her mother.

To
The Princess her Boston relatives were for many years just a nominal reality.
She lived with her father, and he travelled continually, though in a modest
way, living on his moderate income. And never going to America. The child
changed nurses all the time. In Italy it was a contadina; in India she had an ayah;
in Germany she had a yellow-haired peasant girl.

Father
and child were inseparable. He was not a recluse. Wherever he went he was to be
seen paying formal calls going

out
to luncheon or to tea, rarely to dinner. And always with the child. People called
her Princess Urquhart, as if that were her christened name.

She
was a quick, dainty little thing with dark gold hair that went a soft brown,
and wide, slightly prominent blue eyes that were at once so candid and so
knowing. She was always grown up; she never really grew up. Always strangely
wise, and always childish.

It
was her father's fault.

"My
little Princess must never take too much notice of people and the things they
say and do," he repeated to her. "People don't know what they are
doing and saying. They chatter-chat- ter, and they hurt one another, and they
hurt themselves very often, till they cry. But don't take any notice, my little
Princess.

Because
it is all nothing. Inside everybody there is another creature, a demon, which
doesn't care at all. You peel away all the things they say and do and feel, as
cook peels away the out- side of the onions. And in the middle of everybody
there is a green demon, which you can't peel away. And this green demon never
changes, and it doesn't care at all about all the things that happen to the
outside leaves of the person, all the chatter- chatter, and all the husbands
and wives and children, and troubles and fusses.

You
peel everything away from people, and there is a green, upright demon in every
man and woman; and this demon is a man's real self, and a woman's real self. It
doesn't really care about anybody, it belongs to the demons and the primitive
fairies, who never care. But, even so, there are big demons and mean demons,
and splendid demonish fair- ies, and vulgar ones. But there are no royal fairy
women left.

Only
you, my little Princess. You are the last of the royal race of the old people;
the last, my Princess. There are no others. You and I are the last. When I am
dead there will be only you. And that is why, darling, you will never care for
any of the people in the world very much. Because their demons are all dwindled
and vulgar. They are not royal. Only you are royal, after me.

Always
remember that. And always remember, it is a great secret. If you tell people,
they will try to kill you, because they will envy you for being a Princess. It
is our great secret, darling. I am a prince, and you a princess, of the old,
old blood. And we keep our secret between us, all alone.

And
so, darling, you must treat all people very politely, because noblesse oblige.
But you must never forget that you alone are the last of Princesses, and that
all other are less than you are, less noble, more vulgar. Treat them politely
and gently and kindly, darling. But you are the Princess, and they are
commoners. Never try to think of them as if they were like you. They are not.
You will find, always, that they are lacking, lacking in the royal touch, which
only you have—"

The
Princess learned her lesson early—the first lesson, of ab- solute reticence,
the impossibility of intimacy with any other than her father; the second
lesson, of naïve, slightly benevolent politeness. As a small child, something
crystallised in her char- acter, making her clear and finished, and as
impervious as crystal.

"Dear
child!" her hostesses said of her. "She is so quaint and
old-fashioned; such a lady, poor little mite!"

She
was erect, and very dainty. Always small, nearly tiny in physique, she seemed
like a changeling beside her big, hand- some, slightly mad father. She dressed
very simply, usually in blue or delicate greys, with little collars of old
Milan point, or very finely-worked linen. She had exquisite little hands, that
made the piano sound like a spinet when she played. She was rather given to
wearing cloaks and capes, instead of coats, out of doors, and little
eighteenth-century sort of hats. Her com- plexion was pure apple-blossom.

She
looked as if she had stepped out of a picture. But no one, to her dying day,
ever knew exactly the strange picture her father had framed her in and from
which she never stepped.

Her
grandfather and grandmother and her Aunt Maud

demanded
twice to see her, once in Rome and once in Paris. Each time they were charmed,
piqued, and annoyed. She was so exquisite and such a little virgin. At the same
time so knowing and so oddly assured. That odd, assured touch of condescen-
sion, and the inward coldness, infuriated her American relations.

Only
she really fascinated her grandfather. He was spellbound; in a way, in love
with the little faultless thing. His wife would catch him brooding, musing over
his grandchild, long months after the meeting, and craving to see her again. He

cherished
to the end the fond hope that she might come to live with him and her
grandmother.

"Thank
you so much, grandfather. You are so very kind. But Papa and I are such an old
couple, you see, such a crochety old couple, living in a world of our
own."

Her
father let her see the world—from the outside. And he let her read. When she
was in her teens she read Zola and Maupassant, and with the eyes of Zola and
Maupassant she looked on Paris. A little later she read Tolstoi and Dostoevsky.
The latter confused her. The others, she seemed to understand with a very
shrewd, canny understanding, just as she under- stood the Decameron stories as
she read them in their old Itali- an, or the Nibelung poems. Strange and
uncanny, she seemed to understand things in a cold light perfectly, with all
the flush of fire absent. She was something like a changeling, not quite human.

This
earned her, also, strange antipathies. Cabmen and rail- way porters, especially
in Paris and Rome, would suddenly treat her with brutal rudeness, when she was
alone. They seemed to look on her with sudden violent antipathy. They sensed in
her curious impertinence, an easy, sterile impertin- ence towards the things
they felt most. She was so assured, and her flower of maidenhood was so
scentless. She could look at a lusty, sensual Roman cabman as if he were a sort
of grotesque, to make her smile.

She
knew all about him, in Zola. And the peculiar condescension with which she
would give him her order, as if she, frail, beautiful thing, were the only
reality, and he, coarse monster, was a sort of Caliban floundering in the mud
on the margin of the pool of the perfect lotus, would suddenly enrage the
fellow, the real Mediterranean who prided himself on his beauté male, and to
whom the phallic mystery was still the only mystery. And he would turn a
terrible face on her, bully her in a brutal, coarse fashion—hideous. For to him
she had only the blasphemous impertinence of her own sterility.

Encounters
like these made her tremble, and made her know she must have support from the
outside. The power of her spir- it did not extend to these low people, and they
had all the phys- ical power. She realised an implacability of hatred in their

turning
on her. But she did not lose her head. She quietly paid out money and turned
away.

Those
were dangerous moments, though, and she learned to be prepared for them. The
Princess she was, and the fairy from the North, and could never understand the
volcanic phallic rage with which coarse people could turn on her in a paroxysm
of hatred. They never turned on her father like that. And quite early she
decided it was the New England mother in her whom they hated. Never for one
minute could she see with the old Roman eyes, see herself as sterility, the
barren flower taking on airs and an intolerable impertinence. This was what the
Ro- man cabman saw in her. And he longed to crush the barren blossom. Its
sexless beauty and its authority put him in a passion of brutal revolt.

When
she was 19 her grandfather died, leaving her a considerable fortune in the safe
hands of responsible trustees. They would deliver her her income, but only on
condition that she resided for six months in the year in the United States.

"Why
should they make me conditions?" she said to her father. "I refuse to
be imprisoned six months in the year in the United States. We will tell them to
keep their money."

"Let
us be wise, my little Princess, let us be wise. No, we are almost poor, and we
are never safe from rudeness. I cannot al- low anybody to be rude to me. I hate
it, I hate it!" His eyes flamed as he said it. "I could kill any man
or woman who is rude to me. But we are in exile in the world. We are powerless.
If we were really poor, we should be quite powerless, and then I should die.
No, my Princess. Let us take their money, then they will not dare to be rude to
us. Let us take it, as we put on clothes, to cover ourselves from their
aggressions."

There
began a new phase, when the father and daughter spent their summers on the
Great Lakes or in California, or in the Southwest. The father was something of
a poet, the daughter something of a painter. He wrote poems about the lakes or
the redwood trees, and she made dainty drawings. He was physically a strong
man, and he loved the out-of-doors. He would go off with her for days, paddling
in a canoe and sleeping by a campfire. Frail little Princess, she was always
un- daunted, always undaunted. She would ride with him on horse- back over the
mountain trails till she was so tired she was nothing but a bodiless
consciousness sitting astride her pony. But she never gave in. And at night he
folded her in her blanket on a bed of balsam pine twigs, and she lay and looked
at the stars unmurmuring. She was fulfilling her rôle.

People
said to her as the years passed, and she was a woman of 25, then a woman of 30,
and always the same virgin dainty Princess, 'knowing' in a dispassionate way,
like an old woman, and utterly intact: "Don't you ever think what you will
do when your father is no longer with you?"

She
looked at her interlocutor with that cold, elfin detachment of hers:

"No,
I never think of it," she said.

She
had a tiny, but exquisite little house in London, and

another
small, perfect house in Connecticut, each with a faithful housekeeper. Two
homes, if she chose. And she knew many in- teresting literary and artistic people.
What more?

So
the years passed imperceptibly. And she had that quality of the sexless
fairies, she did not change. At 33 she looked 23.

Her
father, however, was aging, and becoming more and more queer. It was now her
task to be his guardian in his private madness. He spent the last three years
of life in the house in Connecticut. He was very much estranged, sometimes had
fits of violence, which almost killed the little Princess. Physical violence
was horrible to her; it seemed to shatter her heart. But she found a woman a
few years younger than herself,

well
educated and sensitive, to be a sort of nurse-companion to the mad old man. So
the fact of madness was never openly admitted. Miss Cummins, the companion, had
a passionate loyalty to the Princess, and a curious affection, tinged with
love, for the handsome, white-haired, courteous old man, who was never at all
aware of his fits of violence once they had passed.

The
Princess was 38 years old when her father died. And quite unchanged. She was
still tiny, and like a dignified, scentless flower. Her soft brownish hair,
almost the colour of beaver fur, was bobbed, and fluffed softly round her apple
blossom face, that was modeled with an arched nose like a proud old Florentine
portrait. In her voice, manner and bearing she was exceedingly still, like a
flower that has blossomed in a shadowy place. And from her blue eyes looked out
the Princess's eternal laconic challenge that grew almost sardonic as the years
passed.

She
was the Princess, and sardonically she looked out on a princeless world. She
was relieved when her father died, and at the same time, it was as if
everything had evaporated around her. She had lived in a sort of hot house, in
the aura of her father's madness. Suddenly the hot house had been removed from
around her, and she was in the raw, vast, vulgar open air.

Quoi
faire? What was she to do? She seemed faced with ab- solute nothingness. Only
she had Miss Cummins, who shared with her the secret, and almost the passion
for her father.

In
fact, the Princess felt that her passion for her mad father had in some curious
way transferred itself largely to Charlotte Cummins during the last years. And
now Miss Cummins was the vessel that held the passion for the dead man. She
herself, the Princess, was an empty vessel.

An
empty vessel in the enormous warehouse of the world.

Quoi
faire? What was she to do? She felt that, since she could not evaporate into
nothingness, like alcohol from an

unstoppered
bottle, she must do something. Never before in her life had she felt the
incumbency. Never, never had she felt she must do anything. That was left to
the vulgar.

Now
her father was dead, she found herself on the fringe of the vulgar crowd,
sharing their necessity to do something. It was a little humiliating. She felt
herself becoming vulgarised. At the same time she found herself looking at men
with a shrewder eye: an eye to marriage. Not that she felt any sudden interest
in men, or attraction towards them. No. She was still neither interested nor attracted
towards men vitally. But marriage, that peculiar abstraction, had imposed a
sort of spell on her. She thought that marriage, in the blank abstract, was the
thing she ought to do. That marriage implied a man she also knew. She knew all
the facts. But the man seemed a property of her own mind rather than a thing in
himself, another thing.

Her
father died in the summer, the month after her 38th birthday. When all was
over, the obvious thing to do, of course, was to travel. With Miss Cummins. The
two women knew each other intimately, but they were always Miss Urquhart and
Miss Cummins to one another, and a certain distance was instinctively
maintained. Miss Cummins, from Phil- adelphia, of scholastic stock, and
intelligent but untravelled, four years younger than the Princess, felt herself
immensely the junior of her 'lady'.

She
had a sort of passionate veneration for the Princess, who seemed to her
ageless, timeless. She could not see the rows of tiny, dainty, exquisite shoes
in the Princess's cupboard without feeling a stab at the heart, a stab of
tenderness and reverence, almost of awe.

Miss
Cummins also was virginal, but with a look of puzzled surprise in her brown
eyes. Her skin was pale and clear, her features well modelled, but there was a
certain blankness in her expression, where the Princess had an odd touch of
Renais- sance grandeur. Miss Cummins's voice was also hushed almost to a
whisper; it was the inevitable effect of Colin Urquhart's room. But the
hushedness had a hoarse quality.

The
Princess did not want to go to Europe. Her face seemed turned west. Now her
father was gone, she felt she would go west, westwards, as if for ever.
Following, no doubt, the March of Empire, which is brought up rather short on
the Pacific coast, among swarms of wallowing bathers.

No,
not the Pacific coast. She would stop short of that. The Southwest was less
vulgar. She would go to New Mexico.

She
and Miss Cummins arrived at the Rancho del Cerro Gordo towards the end of August,
when the crowd was beginning to drift back east. The ranch lay by a stream on
the desert some four miles from the foot of the mountains, a mile away from the
Indian pueblo of San Cristobal. It was a ranch for the rich; the Princess paid
thirty dollars a day for herself and Miss Cummins. But then she had a little
cottage to herself, among the apple trees of the orchard, with an excellent
cook. She and Miss Cummins, however, took dinner at evening in the large
guest-house. For the Princess still entertained the idea of marriage.

The
guests at the Rancho del Cerro Gordo were of all sorts, except the poor sort.
They were practically all rich, and many were romantic. Some were charming,
others were vulgar, some were movie people, quite quaint and not unattractive
in their vulgarity, and many were Jews. The Princess did not care for Jews,
though they were usually the most interesting to talk to.

So
she talked a good deal with the Jews, and painted with the artists, and rode
with the young men from college, and had al- together quite a good time. And
yet she felt something of a fish out of water, or a bird in the wrong forest.
And marriage

remained
still completely in the abstract. No connecting it with any of these young men,
even the nice ones.

The
Princess looked just 25. The freshness of her mouth, the hushed,
delicate-complexioned virginity of her face gave her not a day more. Only a
certain laconic look in her eyes was disconcerting. When she was forced to
write her age, she put 28, making the figure two rather badly, so that it just
avoided being a three.

Men
hinted marriage at her. Especially boys from college suggested it from a
distance. But they all failed before the look of sardonic ridicule in the
Princess's eyes. It always seemed to her rather preposterous, quite ridiculous,
and a tiny bit imper- tinent on their part.

The
only man that intrigued her at all was one of the guides, a man called
Romero—Domingo Romero. It was he who had sold the ranch itself to the
Wilkiesons, ten years before, for two thousand dollars. He had gone away, then
reappeared at the old place. For he was the son of the old Romero, the last of
the Spanish family that had owned miles of land around San Cris- tobal. But the
coming of the white man and the failure of the vast flocks of sheep, and the
fatal inertia, which overcomes all men, at last, on the desert near the
mountains, had finished the Romero family. The last descendants were just
Mexican peasants.

Domingo,
the heir, had spent his $2,000, and was working for white people. He was now
about 30 years old, a tall, silent fellow, with a heavy closed mouth and black
eyes that looked across at one almost sullenly. From behind he was handsome,
with a strong, natural body, and the back of his neck very dark and
well-shapen, strong with life.

But
his dark face was long and heavy, almost sinister, with that peculiar heavy
meaninglessness in it, characteristic of the Mexicans of his own locality. They
are strong, they seem healthy. They laugh and joke with one another. But their
physique and their natures seem static, as if there were nowhere, nowhere at
all for their energies to go, and their faces, degenerating to misshapen
heaviness, seem to have no raison d'être, no radical meaning.

Waiting
either to die or to be aroused into passion and hope. In some of the black eyes
a queer, haunting mystic quality, sombre and a bit gruesome, the
skull-and-cross-bones look of the Penitentes. They had found their raison
d'être in self-torture and death-worship. Unable to wrest a positive sig-
nificance for themselves from the vast, beautiful, but vindictive landscape
they were born into, they turned on their own selves, and worshipped death
through self-torture. The mystic gloom of this showed in their eyes.

Domingo Romero...perhaps

But
as a rule the dark eyes of the Mexicans were heavy and half alive, sometimes
hostile, sometimes kindly, often with the fatal Indian glaze on them, or the
fatal Indian glint.

Domingo
Romero was almost a typical Mexican to look at, with the typical heavy, dark,
long face, clean-shaven, with an almost brutally heavy mouth. His eyes were
black and Indian- looking. Only, at the centre of their hopelessness was a
spark of pride, or self-confidence, or dauntlessness. Just a spark in the midst
of the blackness of static despair.

But
this spark was the difference between him and the mass of men. It gave a
certain alert sensitiveness to his bearing and a certain beauty to his
appearance. He wore a low-crowned black hat, instead of the ponderous headgear
of the usual Mex- ican, and his clothes were thinnish and graceful.

Silent,
aloof, almost imperceptible in the landscape, he was an admirable guide, with a
startling quick intelligence that anticipated diffi- culties about to rise. He
could cook, too, crouching over the camp-fire and moving his lean deft brown
hands. The only fault he had was that he was not forthcoming, he wasn't chatty
and cosy.

"Oh,
don't send Romero with us," the Jews would say. "One can't get any
response from him."

Tourists
come and go, but they rarely see anything, inwardly. None of them ever saw the
spark at the middle of Romero's eye; they were not alive enough to see it.

The
Princess caught it one day, when she had him for a guide. She was fishing for
trout in the canyon, Miss Cummins was reading a book, the horses were tied
under the trees, Romero was fixing a proper fly on her line. He fixed the fly
and handed her the line, looking up at her. And at that moment she

caught
the spark in his eye. And instantly she knew that he was a gentleman, that his
'demon', as her father would have said, was a fine demon. And instantly her
manner towards him changed.

He
had perched her on a rock over a quiet pool, beyond the cottonwood trees. It
was early September, and the canyon already cool, but the leaves of the
cottonwoods were still green.

The
Princess stood on her rock, a small but perfectly formed figure, wearing a
soft, close grey sweater and neatly cut grey riding-breeches, with tall black
boots, her fluffy brown hair straggling from under a little grey felt hat. A
woman? Not quite. A changeling of some sort, perched in outline there on the
rock, in the bristling wild canyon. She knew perfectly well how to handle a
line. Her father had made a fisherman of her.

Romero,
in a black shirt and with loose black trousers pushed into wide black
riding-boots, was fishing a little farther down. He had put his hat on a rock
behind him; his dark head was bent a little forward, watching the water. He had
caught three trout. From time to time he glanced up-stream at the Princess,
perched there so daintily. He saw she had caught nothing.

Soon
he quietly drew in his line and came up to her. His keen eye watched her line,
watched her position. Then, quietly, he suggested certain changes to her,
putting his sensitive brown hand before her. And he withdrew a little, and
stood in silence, leaning against a tree, watching her. He was helping her
across the distance. She knew it, and thrilled. And in a moment she had a bite.

In
two minutes she landed a good trout. She looked round at him quickly, her eyes
sparkling, the colour heightened in her cheeks. And as she met his eyes a smile
of greeting went over his dark face, very sudden, with an odd sweetness.

She
knew he was helping her. And she felt in his presence a subtle, insidious male
kindliness she had never known before waiting upon her. Her cheek flushed, and
her blue eyes darkened.

After
this, she always looked for him, and for that curious dark beam of a man's
kindliness which he could give her, as it were, from his chest, from his heart.
It was something she had never known before.

A
vague, unspoken intimacy grew up between them. She liked his voice, his
appearance, his presence. His natural lan- guage was Spanish; he spoke English
like a foreign language, rather slow, with a slight hesitation, but with a sad,
plangent sonority lingering over from his Spanish. There was a certain subtle
correctness in his appearance; he was always perfectly shaved; his hair was
thick and rather long on top, but always carefully groomed behind. And his fine
black cashmere shirt, his wide leather belt, his well-cut, wide black trousers
going into the embroidered cowboy boots had a certain inextinguish- able
elegance. He wore no silver rings or buckles.

Only
his boots were embroidered and decorated at the top with an inlay of white
suède. He seemed elegant, slender, yet he was very strong.

And
at the same time, curiously, he gave her the feeling that death was not far
from him. Perhaps he too was half in love with death. However that may be, the
sense she had that death was not far from him made him 'possible' to her.

Small
as she was, she was quite a good horsewoman. They gave her at the ranch a
sorrel mare, very lovely in colour, and well-made, with a powerful broad neck
and the hollow back that betokens a swift runner. Tansy, she was called. Her
only fault was the usual mare's failing, she was inclined to be hysterical.

So
that every day the Princess set off with Miss Cummins and Romero, on horseback,
riding into the mountains. Once they went camping for several days, with two
more friends in the party.

"I
think I like it better," the Princess said to Romero, "when we three
go alone."

And
he gave her one of his quick, transfiguring smiles. It was curious no white man
had ever showed her this capacity for subtle gentleness, this power to help her
in silence across a distance, if she were fishing without success, or tired of
her horse, or if Tansy suddenly got scared. It was as if Romero could send her
from his heart a dark beam of succour and sustaining. She had never known this
before, and it was very thrilling.

Then
the smile that suddenly creased his dark face, showing the strong white teeth.
It creased his face almost into a savage

grotesque.
And at the same time there was in it something so warm, such a dark flame of
kindliness for her, she was elated into her true Princess self.

Then
that vivid, latent spark in his eye, which she had seen, and which she knew he
was aware she had seen. It made an

inter
recognition between them, silent and delicate. Here he was delicate as a woman
in this subtle inter recognition.

And
yet his presence only put to flight in her the idée fixe of 'marriage'. For
some reason, in her strange little brain, the idea of marrying him could not enter.
Not for any definite reason.

He
was in himself a gentleman, and she had plenty of money for two. There was no
actual obstacle. Nor was she conventional.

No,
now she came down to it, it was as if their two 'dæmons' could marry, were
perhaps married. Only their two selves, Miss Urquhart and Señor Domingo
Romero, were for some reason incompatible. There was a peculiar subtle intimacy
of inter-recognition between them. But she did not see in the least how it
would lead to marriage. Almost she could more easily marry one of the nice boys
from Harvard or Yale.

The
time passed, and she let it pass. The end of September came, with aspens going
yellow on the mountain heights, and oak-scrub going red. But as yet the
cottonwoods in the valley and canyons had not changed.

"When
will you go away?" Romero asked her, looking at her fixedly, with a blank
black eye.

"By
the end of October," she said. "I have promised to be in Santa
Barbara at the beginning of November."

He
was hiding the spark in his eye from her. But she saw the peculiar sullen
thickening of his heavy mouth.

She
had complained to him many times that one never saw any wild animals, except
chipmunks and squirrels, and perhaps a skunk and a porcupine. Never a deer, or
a bear, or a mountain lion.

"Are
there no bigger animals in these mountains?" she asked, dissatisfied.

"Yes,"
he said. "There are deer—I see their tracks. And I saw the tracks of a
bear."

"But
why can one never see the animals themselves?" She looked dissatisfied and
wistful like a child.

"Why,
it's pretty hard for you to see them. They won't let you come close. You have
to keep still, in a place where they come. Or else you have to follow their
tracks a long way."

"I
can't bear to go away till I've seen them: a bear, or a deer—"

The
smile came suddenly on his face, indulgent.

"Well,
what do you want? Do you want to go up into the mountains to some place, to
wait till they come?"

"Yes,"
she said, looking up at him with a sudden naïve im- pulse of recklessness.

And
immediately his face became sombre again, responsible.

"Well,"
he said, with slight irony, a touch of mockery of her. "You will have to
find a house. It's very cold at night now. You would have to stay all night in
a house."

"And
there are no houses up there?" she said.

"Yes,"
he replied. "There is a little shack that belongs to me, that a miner
built a long time ago, looking for gold. You can go there and stay one night,
and maybe you see something. Maybe! I don't know. Maybe nothing come."

"How
much chance is there?"

"Well,
I don't know. Last time when I was there I see three deer come down to drink at
the water, and I shot two raccoons. But maybe this time we don't see
anything."

"Is
there water there?" she asked.

"Yes,
there is a little round pond, you know, below the spruce trees. And the water
from the snow runs into it."

"Is
it far away?" she asked.

"Yes,
pretty far. You see that ridge there"—and turning to the mountains he
lifted his arm in the gesture which is somehow so moving, out in the West,
pointing to the distance—"that ridge where there are no trees, only
rock"—his black eyes were

focused
on the distance, his face impassive, but as if in pain—"you go round that
ridge, and along, then you come down through the spruce trees to where that
cabin is. My father bought that Placer claim from a miner who was broke, but
nobody ever found any gold or anything, and nobody ever goes there. Too
lonesome!"

The
Princess watched the massive, heavy-sitting, beautiful bulk of the Rocky
Mountains. It was early in October, and the aspens were already losing their
gold leaves; high up, the

spruce
and pine seemed to be growing darker; the great flat patches of oak scrub on
the heights were red like gore.

"Can
I go over there?" she asked, turning to him and meeting the spark in his
eye.

His
face was heavy with responsibility.

"Yes,"
he said, "you can go. But there'll be snow over the ridge, and it's awful
cold, and awful lonesome."

"I
should like to go," she said, persistent.

"All
right," he said. "You can go if you want to."

She
doubted, though, if the Wilkiesons would let her go; at

least
alone with Romero and Miss Cummins.

Yet
an obstinacy characteristic of her nature, an obstinacy

tinged
perhaps with madness, had taken hold of her. She wanted to look over the
mountains into their secret heart. She wanted to descend to the cabin below the
spruce trees, near the tarn of bright green water. She wanted to see the wild
animals move about in their wild unconsciousness.

"Let
us say to the Wilkiesons that we want to make the trip round the Frijoles
canyon," she said.

The
trip round the Frijoles canyon was a usual thing. It would not be strenuous,
nor cold, nor lonely: they could sleep in the log house that was called an
hotel.

Romero
looked at her quickly.

"If
you want to say that," he replied, "you can tell Mrs. Wilkieson. Only
I know she'll be mad with me if I take you up in the mountains to that place.
And I've got to go there first with a pack horse, to take lots of blankets and
some bread. Maybe Miss Cummins can't stand it. Maybe not. It's a hard
trip."

He
was speaking, and thinking, in the heavy, disconnected Mexican fashion.

"Never
mind!" The Princess was suddenly very decisive and stiff with authority.
"I want to do it. I will arrange with Mrs. Wilkieson. And we'll go on
Saturday."

He
shook his head slowly.

"I've
got to go up on Sunday with a pack-horse and blankets," he said.
"Can't do it before."

"Very
well!" she said, rather piqued. "Then we'll start on Monday."

She
hated being thwarted even the tiniest bit.

He
knew that if he started with the pack on Sunday at dawn he would not be back
until late at night. But he consented that they should start on Monday morning
at seven. The obedient Miss Cummins was told to prepare for the Frijoles trip.

On
Sunday Romero had his day off. He had not put in an appear- ance when the
Princess retired on Sunday night, but on Monday morning, as she was dressing,
she saw him bringing in the three horses from the corral. She was in high
spirits.

The
night had been cold. There was ice at the edges of the ir- rigation ditch, and
the chipmunks crawled into the sun and lay with wide, dumb, anxious eyes,
almost too numb to run.

"We
may be away two or three days," said the Princess.

"Very
well. We won't begin to be anxious about you before Thursday, then," said
Mrs. Wilkieson, who was young and cap- able: from Chicago. "Anyway,"
she added, "Romero will see you through. He's so trustworthy."

The
sun was already on the desert as they set off towards the mountains, making the
greasewood and the sage pale as pale- grey sands, luminous the great level
around them. To the right glinted the shadows of the adobe pueblo, flat and
almost invis- ible on the plain, earth of its earth. Behind lay the ranch and
the tufts of tall, plumy cottonwoods, whose summits were yel- lowing under the
perfect blue sky.

Autumn
breaking into colour in the great spaces of the South-West. But the three
trotted gently along the trail, towards the sun that sparkled yellow just above
the dark bulk of the ponderous mountains. Side-slopes were already gleaming
yellow, flaming with a second light, under coldish blue of the pale sky. The
front slopes were in shadow, with submerged lustre of red oak scrub and
dull-gold aspens, blue-black pines and grey-blue rock. While the canyon was
full of a deep blueness.

They
rode single file, Romero first, on a black horse. Himself in black, made a
flickering black spot in the delicate pallor of the great landscape, where even
pine trees at a distance take a film of blue paler than their green. Romero
rode on in silence past the tufts of furry greasewood. The Princess came next,
on her sorrel mare. And Miss Cummins, who was not quite happy on horseback,
came last, in the pale dust that the others kicked up. Sometimes her horse
sneezed, and she started.

But
on they went at a gentle trot. Romero never looked round. He could hear the
sound of the hoofs following, and that was all he wanted. For the rest, he held
ahead. And the Princess, with that black, unheeding figure always travelling
away from her, felt strangely helpless, withal elated.

They
neared the pale, round foothills, dotted with the round dark piñon and cedar
shrubs. The horses clinked and trotted among the stones. Occasionally a big
round greasewood held out fleecy tufts of flowers, pure gold. They wound into
blue shadow, then up a steep stony slope, with the world lying pallid away
behind and below. Then they dropped into the shadow of the San Cristobal
canyon.

The
stream was running full and swift. Occasionally the horses snatched at a tuft
of grass. The trail narrowed and be- came rocky; the rocks closed in; it was
dark and cool as the horses climbed and climbed upwards, and the tree trunks
crowded in the shadowy, silent tightness of the canyon. They were among
cottonwood trees that ran straight up and smooth and round to an extraordinary
height.

Above,
the tips were gold, and it was sun. But away below, where the horses struggled
up the rocks and wound among the trunks, there was still blue shadow by the
sound of waters and an occasional grey festoon of old man's beard, and here and
there a pale, dripping crane's-bill flower among the tangle and the débris of
the virgin place. And again the chill entered the Princess's heart as she
realised what a tangle of decay and despair lay in the virgin forests.

They
scrambled downwards, splashed across stream, up rocks and along the trail of
the other side. Romero's black horse stopped, looked down quizzically at the
fallen trees, then stepped over lightly. The Princess's sorrel followed,
carefully. But Miss Cummins's buckskin made a fuss, and had to be got round.

In
the same silence, save for the clinking of the horses and the splashing as the
trail crossed stream, they worked their way upwards in the tight, tangled
shadow of the canyon. Some- times, crossing stream, the Princess would glance
upwards, and then always her heart caught in her breast.

For
high up, away in heaven, the mountain heights shone yellow, dappled with dark
spruce firs, clear almost as speckled daffodils against the pale turquoise blue
lying high and serene above the dark-blue shadow where the Princess was. And
she would snatch at the blood-red leaves of the oak as her horse crossed a more
open slope, not knowing what she felt.

They
were getting fairly high, occasionally lifted above the canyon itself, in the
low groove below the speckled, gold-spark- ling heights which towered beyond.
Then again they dipped and crossed stream, the horses stepping gingerly across
a tangle of fallen, frail aspen stems, then suddenly floundering in a mass of
rocks. The black emerged ahead, his black tail waving. The Princess let her
mare find her own footing; then she too emerged from the clatter. She rode on
after the black. Then came a great frantic rattle of the buckskin behind. The
Princess was aware of Romero's dark face looking round, with a strange,
demon-like watchfulness, before she herself looked round, to see the buckskin
scrambling rather lamely beyond the rocks, with one of his pale buff knees
already red with blood.

"He
almost went down!" called Miss Cummins.

Frijoles Canyon, New Mexico after a dusting of snow

But
Romero was already out of the saddle and hastening down the path. He made quiet
little noises to the buckskin, and began examining the cut knee.

"Yes,
it's pretty steep up there," said Romero, pushing back his hat and staring
fixedly at the bleeding knee. The buckskin stood in a stricken sort of
dejection. "But I think he'll make it all right," the man added.

"Oh!"
cried Miss Cummins, her eyes bright with sudden passion of unshed tears.
"I wouldn't think of it. I wouldn't ride him up there, not for any
money."

"Why
wouldn't you?" asked Romero.

"It
hurts him."

Romero
bent down again to the horse's knee. "Maybe it hurts him a little,"
he said. "But he can make it all right, and his leg won't get stiff."

"What!
Ride him five hours up the steep mountains?" cried

Miss
Cummins. "I couldn't. I just couldn't do it. I'll lead him a little way
and see if he can go. But I couldn't ride him again. I couldn't. Let me
walk."

"But
Miss Cummins, dear, if Romero says he'll be all right?" said the Princess.

"I
know it hurts him. Oh, I just couldn't bear it."

There
was no doing anything with Miss Cummins. The thought of a hurt animal always
put her into a sort of hysterics.

They
walked forward a little, leading the buckskin. He limped rather badly. Miss
Cummins sat on a rock.

"Why,
it's agony to see him!" she cried. "It's cruel!"

"He
won't limp after a bit, if you take no notice of him," said Romero.
"Now he plays up, and limps very much, because he wants to make you
see."

"I
don't think there can be much playing up," said Miss Cum- mins bitterly.
"We can see how it must hurt him."

"It
don't hurt much," said Romero.

But
now Miss Cummins was silent with antipathy.

It
was a deadlock. The party remained motionless on the

trail,
the Princess in the saddle, Miss Cummins seated on a rock, Romero standing
black and remote near the drooping buckskin.

"Well!"
said the man suddenly at last. "I guess we go back, then."

And
he looked up swiftly at his horse, which was cropping at the mountain herbage
and treading on the trailing reins.

"No!"
cried the Princess. "Oh no!" Her voice rang with a great wail of
disappointment and anger. Then she checked herself.

Buckskin horse

Miss
Cummins rose with energy. "Let me lead the buckskin home," she said,
with cold dignity, "and you two go on."

This
was received in silence. The Princess was looking down at her with a sardonic,
almost cruel gaze.

"We've
only come about two hours," said Miss Cummins. "I don't mind a bit
leading him home. But I couldn't ride him. I couldn't have him ridden with that
knee."

This
again was received in dead silence. Romero remained impassive, almost inert.

"Very
well, then," said the Princess. "You lead him home. You'll be quite
all right. Nothing can happen to you, possibly. And say to them that we have
gone on and shall be home to- morrow—or the day after."

She
spoke coldly and distinctly. For she could not bear to be thwarted.

"Better
all go back, and come again another day," said Romero—non-committal.

"There
will never be another day," cried the Princess. "I want to go
on."

She
looked at him square in the eyes, and met the spark in his eye.

He
raised his shoulders slightly. "If you want it," he said. "I'll
go on with you. But Miss Cummins can ride my horse to the end of the canyon,
and I lead the buckskin. Then I come back to you."

It
was arranged so. Miss Cummins had her saddle put on Romero's black horse,
Romero took the buckskin's bridle, and they started back. The Princess rode
very slowly on, upwards, alone. She was at first so angry with Miss Cummins
that she was blind to everything else. She just let her mare follow her own
inclinations.

The
peculiar spell of anger carried the Princess on, almost unconscious, for an
hour or so. And by this time she was begin- ning to climb pretty high. Her
horse walked steadily all the

time.
They emerged on a bare slope, and the trail wound through frail aspen stems.
Here a wind swept, and some of the aspens were already bare. Others were
fluttering their discs of pure, solid yellow leaves, so nearly like petals,
while the slope ahead was one soft, glowing fleece of daffodil yellow; fleecy
like a golden foxskin, and yellow as daffodils alive in the wind and the high
mountain sun.

She
paused and looked back. The near great slopes were mottled with gold and the
dark hue of spruce, like some un- singed eagle, and the light lay gleaming upon
them. Away through the gap of the canyon she could see the pale blue of the
egg-like desert, with the crumpled dark crack of the Rio Grande Canyon. And
far, far off, the blue mountains like a fence of angels on the horizon.

And
she thought of her adventure. She was going on alone with Romero. But then she
was very sure of herself, and Romero was not the kind of man to do anything to
her against her will. This was her first thought. And she just had a fixed de-
sire to go over the brim of the mountains, to look into the inner chaos of the
Rockies. And she wanted to go with Romero, be- cause he had some peculiar
kinship with her; there was some peculiar link between the two of them. Miss
Cummins anyhow would have been only a discordant note.

She
rode on, and emerged at length in the lap of the summit. Beyond her was a great
concave of stone and stark, dead-grey trees, where the mountain ended against
the sky. But nearer was the dense black, bristling spruce, and at her feet was
the lap of the summit, a flat little valley of sere grass and quiet- standing
yellow aspens, the stream trickling like a thread across.

It
was a little valley or shell from which the stream was gently poured into the
lower rocks and trees of the canyon. Around her was a fairy-like gentleness,
the delicate sere grass, the groves of delicate-stemmed aspens dropping their
flakes of bright yellow. And the delicate, quick little stream threading
through the wild, sere grass.

Here
one might expect deer and fawns and wild things, as in a little paradise. Here
she was to wait for Romero, and they were to have lunch.

She
unfastened her saddle and pulled it to the ground with a crash, letting her
horse wander with a long rope. How beautiful Tansy looked, sorrel, among the
yellow leaves that lay like a patina on the sere ground. The Princess herself
wore a fleecy sweater of a pale, sere buff, like the grass, and riding-breeches
of a pure orange-tawny colour. She felt quite in the picture.

From
her saddle-pouches she took the packages of lunch, spread a little cloth, and
sat to wait for Romero. Then she made a little fire. Then she ate a devilled
egg. Then she ran after Tansy, who was straying across-stream. Then she sat in
the sun, in the stillness near the aspens, and waited.

The
sky was blue. Her little alp was soft and delicate as fairy- land. But beyond
and up jutted the great slopes, dark with the pointed feathers of spruce,
bristling with grey dead trees among grey rock, or dappled with dark and gold.
The beautiful, but fierce, heavy cruel mountains, with their moments of
tenderness.

She
saw Tansy start, and begin to run. Two ghost-like figures on horseback emerged
from the black of the spruce across the stream. It was two Indians on
horseback, swathed like seated mummies in their pale-grey cotton blankets.
Their guns jutted beyond the saddles. They rode straight towards her, to her
thread of smoke.

As
they came near, they unswathed themselves and greeted her, looking at her
curiously from their dark eyes. Their black hair was somewhat untidy, the long
rolled plaits on their shoulders were soiled. They looked tired.

They
got down from their horses near her little fire—a camp was a camp—swathed their
blankets round their hips, pulled the saddles from their ponies and turned them
loose, then sat down. One was a young Indian whom she had met before, the other
was an older man.

"You
all alone?" said the younger man.

"Romero
will be here in a minute," she said, glancing back along the trail.

"Ah,
Romero! You with him? Where are you going?" "Round the ridge,"
she said. "Where are you going?" "We going down to Pueblo."

"Been
out hunting? How long have you been out?"

"Yes.
Been out five days." The young Indian gave a little meaningless laugh.

"Got
anything?"

"No.
We see tracks of two deer—but not got nothing."

The
Princess noticed a suspicious-looking bulk under one of

the
saddles—surely a folded-up deer. But she said nothing. "You must have been
cold," she said.

"Yes,
very cold in the night. And hungry. Got nothing to eat

since
yesterday. Eat it all up." And again he laughed his little meaningless
laugh. Under their dark skins, the two men looked peaked and hungry.

The
Princess rummaged for food among the saddlebags. There was a lump of bacon—the
regular stand-back—and some bread. She gave them this, and they began toasting
slices of it on long sticks at the fire. Such was the little camp Romero saw as
he rode down the slope: the Princess in her orange breeches, her head tied in a
blue-and- brown silk kerchief, sitting opposite the two dark-headed Indians
across the camp-fire, while one of the Indians was leaning forward toasting
bacon, his two plaits of braid-hair dangling as if wearily.

Romero
rode up, his face expressionless. The Indians greeted him in Spanish. He
unsaddled his horse, took food from the bags, and sat down at the camp to eat.
The Princess went to the stream for water, and to wash her hands.

"Got
coffee?" asked the Indians.

"No
coffee this outfit," said Romero.

They
lingered an hour or more in the warm midday sun. Then

Romero
saddled the horses. The Indians still squatted by the fire. Romero and the Princess
rode away, calling Adios to the Indians over the stream and into the dense
spruce whence two strange figures had emerged.

When
they were alone, Romero turned and looked at her curiously, in a way she could
not understand, with such a hard glint in his eyes. And for the first time she
wondered if she was rash.

"I
hope you don't mind going alone with me," she said.

"If
you want it," he replied.

They
emerged at the foot of the great bare slope of rocky

summit,
where dead spruce trees stood sparse and bristling like bristles on a grey dead
hog. Romero said the Mexicans,

20
years back, had fired the mountains, to drive out the whites. This grey concave
slope of summit was corpse-like. The trail was almost invisible. Romero watched
for the trees which the Forest Service had blazed. And they climbed the stark
corpse slope, among dead spruce, fallen and ash-grey, in- to the wind. The wind
came rushing from the west, up the fun- nel of the canyon, from the desert.

And
there was the desert, like a vast mirage tilting slowly upwards towards the
west, im- mense and pallid, away beyond the funnel of the canyon. The Princess
could hardly look.

For
an hour their horses rushed the slope, hastening with a great working of the
haunches upwards, and halting to breathe, scrambling again, and rowing their
way up length by length, on the livid, slanting wall. While the wind blew like
some vast machine.

After
an hour they were working their way on the incline, no longer forcing straight
up. All was grey and dead around them; the horses picked their way over the
silver-grey corpses of the spruce. But they were near the top, near the ridge.

Even
the horses made a rush for the last bit. They had worked round to a scrap of
spruce forest near the very top. They hurried in, out of the huge, monstrous,
mechanical wind, that whistled inhumanly and was palely cold. So, stepping
through the dark screen of trees, they emerged over the crest.

In
front now was nothing but mountains, ponderous, massive, down-sitting
mountains, in a huge and intricate knot, empty of life or soul. Under the
bristling black feathers of spruce near-by lay patches of white snow. The
lifeless valleys were concaves of rock and spruce, the rounded summits and the
hog-backed summits of grey rock crowded one behind the other like some
monstrous herd in arrest.

It
frightened the Princess, it was so inhuman. She had not thought it could be so
inhuman, so, as it were, anti-life. And yet now one of her desires was
fulfilled. She had seen it, the massive, gruesome, repellent core of the
Rockies. She saw it there beneath her eyes, in its gigantic, heavy
gruesomeness.

And
she wanted to go back. At this moment she wanted to turn back. She had looked
down into the intestinal knot of these mountains. She was frightened. She
wanted to go back.

But
Romero was riding on, on the lee side of the spruce forest, above the concaves
of the inner mountains. He turned round to her and pointed at the slope with a
dark hand.

"Here
a miner has been trying for gold," he said. It was a grey scratched-out
heap near a hole—like a great badger hole. And it looked quite fresh.

"Quite
lately?" said the Princess.

"No,
long ago—twenty, thirty years." He had reined in his horse and was looking
at the mountains. "Look!" he said. "There goes the Forest
Service trail—along those ridges, on the top, way over there till it comes to
Lucytown, where is the Goverment road. We go down there—no trail—see behind
that mountain—you see the top, no trees, and some grass?"

His
arm was lifted, his brown hand pointing, his dark eyes piercing into the
distance, as he sat on his black horse twisting round to her. Strange and
ominous, only the demon of himself, he seemed to her. She was dazed and a
little sick, at that height, and she could not see any more. Only she saw an
eagle turning in the air beyond, and the light from the west showed the pattern
on him underneath.

"Shall
I ever be able to go so far?" asked the Princess faintly, petulantly.

"Oh
yes! All easy now. No more hard places."

They
worked along the ridge, up and down, keeping on the lee side, the inner side,
in the dark shadow. It was cold. Then the trail laddered up again, and they
emerged on a narrow ridge-track, with the mountain slipping away enormously on
either side. The Princess was afraid. For one moment she looked out, and saw
the desert, the desert ridges, more desert, more blue ridges, shining pale and
very vast, far below, vastly palely tilting to the western horizon. It was
ethereal and terrifying in its gleaming, pale, half-burnished immensity, tilted
at the west.

She
could not bear it. To the left was the ponderous, involved mass of mountains
all kneeling heavily. She closed her eyes and let her consciousness evaporate
away. The mare followed the trail.

So
on and on, in the wind again.

They
turned their backs to the wind, facing inwards to the mountains. She thought
they had left the trail; it was quite invisible.

"No,"
he said, lifting his hand and pointing. "Don't you see the blazed
trees?"

And
making an effort of consciousness, she was able to

perceive
on a pale-grey dead spruce stem the old marks where an axe had chipped a piece
away. But with the height, the cold, the wind, her brain was numb.

They
turned again and began to descend; he told her they had left the trail. The
horses slithered in the loose stones, picking their way downward. It was
afternoon, the sun stood obtrusive and gleaming in the lower heavens—about four
o'clock. The horses went steadily, slowly, but obstinately onwards. The air was
getting colder. They were in among the lumpish peaks and steep concave valleys.
She was barely conscious at all of Romero.

He
dismounted and came to help her from her saddle. She tottered, but would not
betray her feebleness.

"We
must slide down here," he said. "I can lead the horses."

They
were on a ridge, and facing a steep bare slope of pallid, tawny mountain grass
on which the western sun shone full. It was steep and concave. The Princess
felt she might start slip- ping, and go down like a toboggan into the great
hollow.

But
she pulled herself together. Her eye blazed up again with excitement and
determination. A wind rushed past her; she could hear the shriek of spruce
trees far below. Bright spots came on her cheeks as her hair blew across. She
looked a wild, fairy-like little thing.

"No,"
she said. "I will take my horse."

"Then
mind she doesn't slip down on top of you," said Romero.

And
away he went, nimbly dropping down the pale, steep incline, making from rock to
rock, down the grass, and following any little slanting groove. His horse
hopped and slithered after him, and sometimes stopped dead, with forefeet
pressed back, refusing to go farther. He, below his horse, looked up and pulled
the reins gently, and encouraged the creature. Then the horse once more dropped
his forefeet with a jerk, and the descent continued.

The
Princess set off in blind, reckless pursuit, tottering and yet nimble. And
Romero, looking constantly back to see how she was faring, saw her fluttering
down like some queer little bird, her orange breeches twinkling like the legs
of some duck,

and
her head, tied in the blue and buff kerchief, bound round and round like the
head of some blue-topped bird. The sorrel mare rocked and slipped behind her.
But down came the

Prin-cess
in a reckless intensity, a tiny, vivid spot on the great hollow flank of the
tawny mountain. So tiny! Tiny as a frail bird's egg.

It
made Romero's mind go blank with wonder. But they had to get down, out of that
cold and dragging wind. The spruce trees stood below, where a tiny stream
emerged in stones. Away plunged Romero, zigzagging down. And away behind, up
the slope, fluttered the tiny, bright-coloured Princess, holding the end of the
long reins, and leading the lumbering, four-footed, sliding mare.

At
last they were down. Romero sat in the sun, below the wind, beside some squaw-berry
bushes. The Princess came near, the colour flaming in her cheeks, her eyes dark
blue, much darker than the kerchief on her head, and glowing unnaturally.

"We
made it," said Romero.

"Yes,"
said the Princess, dropping the reins and subsiding on to the grass, unable to
speak, unable to think. But, thank heaven, they were out of the wind and in the
sun.

In
a few minutes her consciousness and her control began to come back. She drank a
little water. Romero was attending to the saddles. Then they set off again,
leading the horses still a little farther down the tiny streambed. Then they
could mount.

They
rode down a bank and into a valley grove dense with as- pens. Winding through
the thin, crowding, pale-smooth stems, the sun shone flickering beyond them,
and the disc-like aspen leaves, waving queer mechanical signals, seemed to be
splash- ing the gold light before her eyes. She rode on in a splashing dazzle
of gold.

Then
they entered shadow and the dark, resinous spruce trees. The fierce boughs always
wanted to sweep her off her horse. She had to twist and squirm past.

But
there was a semblance of an old trail. And all at once they emerged in the sun
on the edge of the spruce grove, and there was a little cabin, and the bottom
of a small, naked valley with grey rock and heaps of stones, and a round pool
of intense green water, dark green. The sun was just about to leave it.

Indeed,
as she stood, the shadow came over the cabin and over herself; they were in the
lower gloom, a twilight. Above, the heights still blazed.

It
was a little hole of a cabin, near the spruce trees, with an earthen floor and
an unhinged door. There was a wooden bed- bunk, three old sawn-off log-lengths
to sit on as stools, and a sort of fireplace; no room for anything else. The
little hole would hardly contain two people. The roof had gone—but Romero had
laid on thick spruce boughs.

The
strange squalor of the primitive forest pervaded the place, the squalor of
animals and their droppings, the squalor of the wild. The Princess knew the
peculiar repulsiveness of it. She was tired and faint.

Romero
hastily got a handful of twigs, set a little fire going in the stove grate, and
went out to attend to the horses. The Prin- cess vaguely, mechanically, put
sticks on the fire, in a sort of stupor, watching the blaze, stupefied and
fascinated. She could not make much fire—it would set the whole cabin alight.
And smoke oozed out of the dilapidated mud-and-stone chimney.

When
Romero came in with the saddle-pouches and saddles, hanging the saddles on the
wall, there sat the little Princess on her stump of wood in front of the
dilapidated fire-grate, warm- ing her tiny hands at the blaze, while her
oranges breeches glowed almost like another fire. She was in a sort of stupor.

"You
have some whisky now, or some tea? Or wait for some soup?" he asked.

She
rose and looked at him with bright, dazed eyes, half

comprehending;
the colour glowing hectic in her cheeks.

"Some
tea," she said, "with a little whisky in it. Where's the
kettle?"

"Wait,"
he said. "I'll bring the things."

She
took her cloak from the back of her saddle, and followed him into the open. It
was a deep cup of shadow. But above the sky was still shining, and the heights
of the mountains were blazing with aspen like fire blazing.

Their
horses were cropping the grass among the stones. Romero clambered up a heap of
grey stones and began lifting away logs and rocks, till he had opened the mouth
of one of the miner's little old workings. This was his cache. He brought out
bundles of blankets, pans for cooking, a little petrol camp

stove,
an axe, the regular camp outfit. He seemed so quick and energetic and full of
force. This quick force dismayed the

Princess
a little.

She
took a saucepan and went down the stones to the water. It was very still and
mysterious, and of a deep green colour, yet pure, transparent as glass. How
cold the place was! How mys- terious and fearful.

She
crouched in her dark cloak by the water, rinsing the saucepan, feeling the cold
heavy above her, the shadow like a vast weight upon her, bowing her down. The
sun was leaving the mountain tops, departing, leaving her under profound
shadow. Soon it would crush her down completely.

Sparks?
Or eyes looking at her across the water? She gazed, hypnotised. And with her
sharp eyes she made out in the dusk the pale form of a bobcat crouching by the
water's edge, pale as the stones among which it crouched, opposite. And it was
watching her with cold, electric eyes of strange intentness, a sort of cold,
icy wonder and fearlessness. She saw its museau pushed forward, its tufted ears
pricking intensely up. It was watching her with cold, animal curiosity,
something demonish and conscienceless.

She
made a swift movement, spilling her water. And in a flash the creature was gone,
leaping like a cat that is escaping; but strange and soft in its motion, with
its little bobtail. Rather fascinating. Yet that cold, intent, demonish
watching! She shivered with cold and fear. She knew well enough the dread and
repulsiveness of the wild.

Romero
carried in the bundles of bedding and the camp out- fit. The windowless cabin
was already dark inside. He lit a lan- tern, and then went out again with the
axe. She heard him chopping wood as she fed sticks to the fire under her water.
When he came in with an armful of oak-scrub faggots, she had just thrown the
tea into the water.

"Sit
down," she said, "and drink tea."

He
poured a little bootleg whisky into the enamel cups, and in the silence the two
sat on the log-ends, sipping the hot liquid and coughing occasionally from the
smoke.

"We
burn these oak sticks," he said. "They don't make hardly any
smoke."

Curious
and remote he was, saying nothing except what had to be said. And she, for her
part, was as remote from him. They seemed far, far apart, worlds apart, now
they were so near.

He
unwrapped one bundle of bedding, and spread the blankets and the sheepskin in
the wooden bunk.

"You
lie down and rest," he said, "and I make the supper."

She
decided to do so. Wrapping her cloak round her, she lay down in the bunk,
turning her face to the wall. She could hear him preparing supper over the
little petrol stove. Soon she could smell the soup he was heating; and soon she
heard the hissing of fried chicken in a pan.

"You
eat your supper now?" he said.

With
a jerky, despairing movement, she sat up in the bunk, tossing back her hair.
She felt cornered.

"Give
it to me here," she said.

He
handed her first the cupful of soup. She sat among the blankets, eating it
slowly. She was hungry. Then he gave her an enamel plate with pieces of fried
chicken and currant jelly, butter and bread. It was very good. As they ate the
chicken he made the coffee. She said never a word. A certain resentment filled
her. She was cornered.

When
supper was over he washed the dishes, dried them, and put everything away
carefully, else there would have been no room to move in the hole of a cabin.
The oak-wood gave out a good bright heat.

He
stood for a few moments at a loss. Then he asked her: "You want to go to
bed soon?"

"Soon,"
she said. "Where are you going to sleep?"

"I
make my bed here—" he pointed to the floor along the

wall.
"Too cold out of doors."

"Yes,"
she said. "I suppose it is."

She
sat immobile, her cheeks hot, full of conflicting thoughts.

And
she watched him while he folded the blankets on the floor, a sheepskin
underneath. Then she went out into night.

The
stars were big. Mars sat on the edge of a mountain, for all the world like the
blazing eye of a crouching mountain lion. But she herself was deep, deep below
in a pit of shadow. In the intense silence she seemed to hear the spruce forest
crackling with electricity and cold. Strange, foreign stars floated on that
unmoving water. The night was going to freeze. Over the hills

came
the far sobbing-singing howling of the coyotes. She wondered how the horses
would be.

Shuddering
a little, she turned to the cabin. Warm light showed through its chinks. She
pushed at the rickety, half- opened door.

"What
about the horses?" she said.

"My
black, he won't go away. And your mare will stay with him. You want to go to
bed now?"

"I
think I do."

"All
right. I feed the horses some oats."

And
he went out into the night. He did not come back for some time.

She
was lying wrapped up tight in the bunk.

He
blew out the lantern, and sat down on his bedding to take

off
his clothes. She lay with her back turned. And soon, in the silence, she was
asleep.

She
dreamed it was snowing, and the snow was falling on her through the roof,
softly, softly, helplessly, and she was going to be buried alive. She was
growing colder and colder, the snow was weighing down on her. The snow was
going to absorb her.

She
awoke with a sudden convulsion, like pain. She was really very cold; perhaps
the heavy blankets had numbed her. Her heart seemed unable to beat, she felt
she could not move.

With
another convulsion she sat up. It was intensely dark. There was not even a
spark of fire, the light wood had burned right away. She sat in thick oblivious
darkness. Only through a chink she could see a star.

What
did she want? Oh, what did she want? She sat in bed and rocked herself
woefully. She could hear the steady breathing of the sleeping man. She was
shivering with cold; her heart seemed as if it could not beat. She wanted
warmth, protection, she wanted to be taken away from herself. And at the same
time, perhaps more deeply than anything, she wanted to keep herself intact,
intact, untouched, that no one should have any power over her, or rights to
her. It was a wild necessity in her that no one, particularly no man, should
have any rights or power over her, that no one and nothing should possess her.

Yet
that other thing! And she was so cold, so shivering, and her heart could not
beat. Oh, would not someone help her heart to beat?

She
tried to speak, and could not. Then she cleared her throat.

"Romero,"
she said strangely, "it is so cold."

Where
did her voice come from, and whose voice was it, in the dark?

She
heard him at once sit up, and his voice, startled, with a resonance that seemed
to vibrate against her, saying:

"You
want me to make you warm?"

"Yes."

As
soon as he had lifted her in his arms, she wanted to

scream
to him not to touch her. She stiffened herself. Yet she was dumb.

And
he was warm, but with a terrible animal warmth that seemed to annihilate her.
He panted like an animal with desire. And she was given over to this thing.

She
had never, never wanted to be given over to this. But she had willed that it
should happen to her. And according to her will, she lay and let it happen. But
she never wanted it. She never wanted to be thus assailed and handled, and
mauled. She wanted to keep herself to herself.

However,
she had willed it to happen, and it had happened. She panted with relief when
it was over.

Yet
even now she had to lie within the hard, powerful clasp of this other creature,
this man. She dreaded to struggle to go away. She dreaded almost too much the
icy cold of that other bunk.

"Do
you want to go away from me?" asked his strange voice. Oh, if it could
only have been a thousand miles away from her! Yet she had willed to have it
thus close.

"No,"
she said.

And
she could feel a curious joy and pride surging up again in him: at her expense.
Because he had got her. She felt like a victim there. And he was exulting in
his power over her, his possession, his pleasure.

When
dawn came, he was fast asleep. She sat up suddenly.

"I
want a fire," she said.

He
opened his brown eyes wide, and smiled with a curious

tender
luxuriousness.

"I
want you to make a fire," she said.

He
glanced at the chinks of light. His brown face hardened to the day.

"All
right," he said. "I'll make it."

She
did her face while he dressed. She could not bear to look at him. He was so
suffused with pride and luxury. She hid her face almost in despair. But feeling
the cold blast of air as he opened the door, she wriggled down into the warm
place where he had been. How soon the warmth ebbed, when he had gone!

He
looked up suddenly, transfixed, and his brown eyes, so soft and luxuriously
widened, looked straight at her.

"You
want to?" he said.

"We'd
better get back as soon as possible," she said, turning aside from his eyes.

"You
want to get away from me?" he asked, repeating the question of the night
in a sort of dread.

"I
want to get away from here," she said decisively. And it was true. She
wanted supremely to get away, back to the world of people.

He
rose slowly to his feet, holding the aluminum frying-pan.

"Don't
you like last night?" he asked.

"Not
really," she said. "Why? Do you?"

He
put down the frying pan and stood staring at the wall.

She
could see she had given him a cruel blow. But she did not relent. She was
getting her own back. She wanted to regain possession of all herself, and in
some mysterious way she felt that he possessed some part of her still.

He
looked round at her slowly, his face greyish and heavy.

"You
Americans," he said, "you always want to do a man down."

"I
am not American," she said. "I am British. And I don't want to do any
man down. I only want to go back now."

"And
what will you say about me, down there?"

"That
you were very kind to me, and very good."

He
crouched down again, and went on turning the eggs. He

gave
her her plate, and her coffee, and sat down to his own food.

But
again he seemed not to be able to swallow. He looked up at her.

"You
don't like last night?" he asked.

"Not
really," she said, though with some difficulty. "I don't care for
that kind of thing."

A
blank sort of wonder spread over his face at these words, followed immediately
by a black look of anger, and then a stony, sinister despair.

"You
don't?" he said, looking her in the eyes.

"Not
really," she replied, looking back with steady hostility into his eyes.

Then
a dark flame seemed to come from his face.

"I
make you," he said, as if to himself.

He
rose and reached her clothes, that hung on a peg: the fine

linen
underwear, the orange breeches, the fleecy jumper, the blue-and-bluff kerchief;
then he took up her riding-boots and her bead moccasins. Crushing everything in
his arms, he opened the door. Sitting up, she saw him stride down to the
dark-green pool in the frozen shadow of that deep cup of a valley. He tossed
the clothing and the boots out on the pool. Ice had formed.

And
on the pure, dark green mirror, in the slaty shadow, the Princess saw her
things lying, the white linen, the orange breeches, the black boots, the blue
moccasins, a tangled heap of colour. Romero picked up rocks and heaved them out
at the ice, till the surface broke and the fluttering clothing disappeared in
the rattling water, while the valley echoed and shouted again with the sound.

She
sat in despair among the blankets, hugging tight her pale-blue cloak. Romero
strode straight back to the cabin.

"Now
you stay here with me," he said.

She
was furious. Her blue eyes met his. They were like two demons watching one
another. In his face, beyond a sort of

unrelieved
gloom, was a demonish desire for death.

He
saw her looking round the cabin, scheming. He saw her eyes on his rifle. He
took the gun and went out with it. Returning, he pulled out her saddle, carried
it to the tarn, and threw it in.

Then
he fetched his own saddle, and did the same.

"Now
will you go away?" he said, looking at her with a smile.

She
debated within herself whether to coax him and wheedle him. But she knew he was
already beyond it. She sat among her blankets in a frozen sort of despair, hard
as hard ice with anger.

He
did the chores, and disappeared with the gun. She got up in her blue pijamas,
huddled in her cloak, and stood in the doorway. The dark-green pool was
motionless again, the stony slopes were pallid and frozen. Shadow still lay,
like an after- death, deep in this valley. Always in the distance she saw the
horses feeding. If she could catch one! The brilliant yellow sun was half-way
down the mountain. It was nine o'clock.

All
day she was alone, and she was frightened. What she was frightened of she
didn't know. Perhaps the crackling in the dark spruce wood. Perhaps just the
savage, heartless wildness of the mountains. But all day she sat in the sun in
the doorway of the cabin, watching, watching for hope. And all the time her
bowels were cramped with fear.

She
saw a dark spot that probably was a bear, roving across the pale grassy slope
in the far distance, in the sun.

When,
in the afternoon, she saw Romero approaching, with silent suddenness, carrying
his gun and a dead deer, the cramp in her bowels relaxed, then became colder.
She dreaded him with a cold dread.

"There
is deer meat," he said, throwing the dead doe at her feet.

"You
don't want to go away from here," he said. "This is a nice
place."

She
shrank into the cabin.

"Come
into the sun," he said, following her. She looked up at him with hostile,
frightened eyes.

"Come
into the sun," he repeated, taking her gently by the arm, in a powerful
grasp.

She
knew it was useless to rebel. Quietly he led her out, and seated himself in the
doorway, holding her still by the arm.

"In
the sun it is warm," he said. "Look, this is a nice place. You are
such a pretty white woman, why do you want to act mean to me? Isn't this a nice
place? Come! Come here! It is sure warm here."

He
drew her to him, and in spite of her stony resistance, he took her cloak from
her, holding her in her thin blue pijamas.

She,
stony and powerless, had to submit to him. The sun shone on her white, delicate
skin.

"I
sure don't mind hell fire," he said. "After this."

A
queer, luxurious good humour seemed to possess him again.

But
though outwardly she was powerless, inwardly she resisted him, absolutely and
stonily.

When
later he was leaving her again, she said to him suddenly:

"You
think you can conquer me this way. But you can't. You can never conquer
me."

He
stood arrested, looking back at her, with many emotions conflicting in his
face—wonder, surprise, a touch of horror, and an unconscious pain that crumpled
his face till it was like a mask. Then he went out without saying a word, hung
the dead deer on a bough, and started to flay it. While he was at this
butcher's work, the sun sank and cold night came on again.

"You
see," he said to her as he crouched, cooking the supper, "I ain't
going to let you go. I reckon you called to me in the night, and I've some
right. If you want to fix it up right now with me, and say you want to be with
me, we'll fix it up now and go down to the ranch to-morrow and get married or
whatever you want. But you've got to say you want to be with me. Else I shall
stay right here, till something happens."

She
waited a while before she answered:

"I
don't want to be with anybody against my will. I don't dislike you; at least, I
didn't, till you tried to put your will over mine. I won't have anybody's will
put over me. You can't succeed. Nobody could. You can never get me under your
will. And you won't have long to try, because soon they will send someone to
look for me."

He
pondered this last, and she regretted having said it. Then, sombre, he bent to
the cooking again.

He
could not conquer her, however much he violated her. Be- cause her spirit was
hard and flawless as a diamond. But he could shatter her. This she knew. Much
more, and she would be shattered.

In
a sombre, violent excess he tried to expend his desire for her. And she was
racked with an agony, and felt each time she would die. Because, in some
peculiar way, he had got hold of her, some unrealised part of her which she
never wished to realise.

Racked
with a burning, tearing anguish, she felt that the thread of her being would
break, and she would die. The burning heat that racked her inwardly.

If
only, only she could be alone again, cool and intact! If only she could recover
herself again, cool and intact! Would she ever, ever, ever be able to bear
herself again?

Even
now she did not hate him. It was beyond that. Like some racking, hot doom. Personally
he hardly existed.

The
next day he would not let her have any fire, because of attracting attention
with the smoke. It was a grey day, and she was cold. He stayed round, and
heated soup on the petrol stove.

She
lay motionless in the blankets.

And
in the afternoon she pulled the clothes over her head and broke into tears. She
had never really cried in her life. He dragged the blankets away and looked to
see what was shaking her. She sobbed in helpless hysterics. He covered her over
again and went outside, looking at the mountains, where clouds were dragging
and leaving a little snow. It was a violent, windy, horrible day, the evil of
winter rushing down.

She
cried for hours. And after this a great silence came between them. They were
two people who had died. He did not touch her any more. In the night she lay
and shivered like a dying dog.

She
felt that her very shivering would rupture something in her

body,
and she would die.

At
last she had to speak.

"Could
you make a fire? I am so cold," she said, with chatter- ing teeth.

"Want
to come over here?" came his voice.

"I
would rather you made me a fire," she said, her teeth knocking together
and chopping the words in two.

He
got up and kindled a fire. At last the warmth spread, and she could sleep.

The
next day was still chilly, with some wind. But the sun shone. He went about in
silence, with a dead-looking face. It was now so dreary and so like death she
wished he would do anything rather than continue in this negation. If now he
asked her to go down with him to the world and marry him, she would do it.

What
did it matter? Nothing mattered any more.

But
he would not ask her. His desire was dead and heavy like ice within him. He
kept watch around the house.

On
the fourth day as she sat huddled in the doorway in the sun, hugged in a
blanket, she saw two horsemen come over the crest of the grassy slope—small
figures. She gave a cry. He looked up quickly and saw the figures. The men had
dismounted. They were looking for the trail.

"They
are looking for me," she said.

"Muy
bien," he answered in Spanish.

He
went and fetched his gun, and sat with it across his

knees.

"Oh!"
she said. "Don't shoot!"

He
looked across at her.

"Why?"
he said. "You like staying with me?"

"No,"
she said. "But don't shoot."

"I
ain't going to Pen," he said.

"You
won't have to go to Pen," she said. "Don't shoot!"

"I'm
going to shoot," he muttered.

And
straightaway he kneeled and took very careful aim. The

Princess
sat on in an agony of helplessness and hopelessness.

The
shot rang out. In an instant she saw one of the horses on the pale grassy slope
rear and go rolling down. The man had dropped in the grass, and was invisible.
The second man clambered on his horse, and on that precipitous place went at a
gallop in a long swerve towards the nearest spruce tree cover.

Bang!
Bang! went Romero's shots. But each time he missed,

and
the running horse leaped like a kangaroo towards cover.

It
was hidden. Romero now got behind a rock; tense silence, in the brilliant
sunshine. The Princess sat on the bunk inside the cabin, crouching, paralysed.

For
hours, it seemed, Romero knelt behind this rock, in his black shirt,
bare-headed, watching. He had a beautiful, alert figure.

The
Princess wondered why she did not feel sorry for him. But her spirit was hard
and cold, her heart could not melt. Though now she would have called him to
her, with love.

But
no, she did not love him. She would never love any man. Never! It was fixed and
sealed in her, almost vindictively.

Suddenly
she was so startled she almost fell from the bunk. A shot rang out quite close
from behind the cabin. Romero leaped straight into the air, his arms fell
outstretched, turning as he leaped. And even while he was in the air, a second
shot rang out, and he fell with a crash, squirming, his hands clutching the
earth towards the cabin door.

The
Princess sat absolutely motionless, transfixed, staring at the prostrate
figure. In a few moments the figure of a man in the Forest Service appeared
close to the house; a young man in a broad-brimmed Stetson hat, dark flannel
shirt, and riding- boots, carrying a gun. He strode over to the prostrate
figure.

"Got
you, Romero!" he said aloud. And he turned the dead man over. There was
already a little pool of blood where Romero's breast had been.

"H'm!"
said the Forest Service man. "Guess I got you nearer than I thought."

And
he squatted there, staring at the dead man.

The
distant calling of his comrade aroused him. He stood up.

"Hullo,
Bill!" he shouted. "Yep! Got him! Yep! Done him in,

apparently."

The
second man rode out of the forest on a grey horse. He

had
a ruddy, kind face, and round brown eyes, dilated with dismay.

"He's
not passed out?" he asked anxiously.

"Looks
like it," said the first young man coolly.

The
second dismounted and bent over the body. Then he

stood
up again, and nodded.

"Yea-a!"
he said. "He's done in all right. It's him all right,

boy!
It's Domingo Romero."

"Yep!
I know it!" replied the other.

Then
in perplexity he turned and looked into the cabin,

where
the Princess squatted, staring with big owl eyes from her red blanket.

"Hello!"
he said, coming towards the hut. And he took his hat off. Oh, the sense of
ridicule she felt! Though he did not mean any.

But
she could not speak, no matter what she felt.

"What'd
this man start firing for?" he asked.

She
fumbled for words, with numb lips.

"He
had gone out of his mind!" she said, with solemn, stam-

mering
conviction.

"Good
Lord! You mean to say he'd gone out of his mind?

Whew!
That's pretty awful! That explains it then. H'm!"

He
accepted the explanation without more ado.

With
some difficulty they succeeded in getting the Princess

down
to the ranch. But she, too, was not a little mad.

"I'm
not quite sure where I am," she said to Mrs. Wilkieson,

as
she lay in bed. "Do you mind explaining?"

Mrs.
Wilkieson explained tactfully.

"Oh
yes!" said the Princess. "I remember. And I had an

accident
in the mountains, didn't I? Didn't we meet a man who'd gone mad, and who shot
my horse from under me?"

"Yes,
you met a man who had gone out of his mind."

The
real affair was hushed up. The Princess departed east in a fortnight's time, in
Miss Cummins's care. Apparently she had recovered herself entirely. She was the
Princess, and a virgin intact.

But
her bobbed hair was grey at the temples, and her eyes were a little mad. She
was slightly crazy.

"Since
my accident in the mountains, when a man went mad and shot my horse from under
me, and my guide had to shoot him dead, I have never felt quite myself."